Boys, Beasts & Men by Sam J. Miller

Author:Sam J. Miller [Miller, Sam J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616963729
Amazon: 1616963727
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Published: 2022-06-13T18:30:00+00:00

ix.

“Bullshit, man,” I say, laughing.

“I took one of yours,” he says. “Your mom. The time you ran away from home. She took drugs, trying to track you down . . .”

He keeps talking. Tells me the whole thing. Even though I already know it.

When Your Child Strays from God

Everyone says it but no one believes it: attitude makes all the difference. People parrot the words but the words don’t penetrate, not really, not down to the core. That’s why Carolina Bugtuttle has all those lines on her face, always scowling when I reach for that third or fourth cookie after Sunday worship, always emailing me LOW FAT RECIPES and MIRACLE DIETS peppered with those godforsaken, soulless smiley-face things. That’s why she’s always stressed out about six hundred things that don’t have a smidge to do with her. Because she has a bad attitude. She needs to worry less about my weight and more about that degenerate son of hers, if you ask me, but you didn’t, so.

My smile isn’t just on the surface. That’s why I knew, Wednesday morning, when I woke up and Timmy still hadn’t come home, when I checked my phone and he still hadn’t replied to my texts and voicemails, why I knew I had the strength to go find him—wherever he was. And bring him home. And get started on a new installment of The Deacon’s Wife for the church e-bulletin. Write it raw, rough, naked, curses and gossip intact, more a letter to my sweet, wise husband Pastor Jerome than anything else, so he can go through it with scissors and a scalpel before sending it out to the four-thousand-strong flock of the Grace Abounding Evangelical Church.

What To Do When Your Child Strays from God

Timmy’s rebellion had spent a long time percolating. By the time Timmy vanished I had seen the signs—seen him in Facebook photos with That Whore Susan; seen him sketching the Spiderman logo that webheads were so fond of—and had armed myself with knowledge, courtesy of the Internet. I knew more about spiderwebbing than any God-fearing mother has any business knowing. I had logged enough hours on websites and wikis and forums to bring me to the attention of a couple dozen law enforcement agencies, places Carolina Bugtuttle would never in hell have spent a single second. Not even if it meant the difference between saving her son’s soul and losing him forever.

I climbed the steps slowly, aware of the sin I was about to commit. I paused at the door to his room.

Let me tell you something about the bedrooms of teenage boys. They are sovereign nations, islands of liberty hedged in on all sides by brutal tyranny. To cross the threshold uninvited is an act of war. To intrude and search is a crime meriting full-scale thermonuclear response: neutron-bomb silence, mutually-assured temper tantrums.

So I did not enter Timmy’s room lightly, and panic seized me in the instant that I did. Fear stopped me in my tracks, threatened to turn me around.

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